The pillowcase dress that turned into a skirt

I came across some tutorials on how to make a pillowcase dress so my interest was peaked. I spent quite a bit of time watching and learning how to make them. So last night I decided to dig through my linen closet to see what I could find.

After taking inventory there were only a handful of cases that would work due to the patterns. (I was tempted to use my husband's star wars pillowcases for the heck of it). My youngest daughter decided to pick an old Powder Puff girl pillowcase.

So here starts my adventure. Since it was a pillowcase obviously the pattern will be horizontal rather than vertical. (this realization did not come to me until I put the case up against her). Hmmm sideways powder puff girls wouldn't work.

Bright idea #2! Let's open up the pillowcase and then the designs would run vertical! After an hour the pillow case was finally open all the way. Stupid me didn't realize that now the characters on the back side would be upside down. Time to take a break after that.

Pillowcase dress is now out of the question. After spending all that time I decided to make a skirt. I used my Bobbin's nest pattern as a guideline.

Here are the problems I ran into with the skirt:
- I apparently am no good with using a rotary cutter yet. I ended up cutting the skirt about 1 inch too short on the width.
- I wanted to add a ruffle to the bottom. My strip came out way too short
- When making the casing for the elastic I forgot to sew up the side hem before doing this

The plus side:
-I finally figured out why my first skirt seemed so tight. I was able to make the skirt have more ease and not be as constricting
- I improvised my own bottom edging.

All in all I spent way too much time tweaking this, but it helped me learn a couple new techniques.

So after spending the entire afternoon working on the skirt here is the finished result:

Here is the happy new owner happily wearing it:

I will attempt a pillowcase dress sometime in the near future.

New Skirt

So it appears that I'm back on the "I want to learn to sew" kick. I think part of this new craze is because I'm expecting a new baby in August and would love to make some handmade clothes for him. One problem I'm running into is that "cute" boy patterns are hard to find. Luckily I have 2 girls so I can indulge in making pretty girly items for them.

My local sewing/yarn shop, Bobbin's Nest, had a free demo day to make a girl twirly skirt. I figured this would be great to attend to see if I could actually attempt sewing again. The demo was quick yet informational. I was excited the skirt seemed so easy to make. No real pattern just taking measurements of the garment wearer and go from there.

I had a lot of the materials to make it at home so I let my daughter pick out her choice of fabric. Here is the end result:

I can see some of my mistakes and the next one I hope to make will be a bit better. She loves it though and it isn't falling apart on her. So I'll take this as a win in the sewing column.